Infrastructure, services and the environment of Juba city
By Lino Lual Lual, Juba, South Sudan
June 19, 2016 (SSB) — Infrastructure and service provision are failing to keep pace with the expanding town, existing structures are under growing pressure and in many areas they are deteriorating. State authorities have been reluctant to expand infrastructure and the provision of public services in the belief that doing so might encourage an even greater influx of people into Juba. In fact, the factors influencing migrants’ decision to come to Juba are more complex. While improvements in access to services in rural areas and in smaller state capitals might one day have the effect of reducing the number of people coming to Juba, this is unlikely to be a major incentive for existing residents to leave.
There is a general view that services in Juba are better than in the rest of Southern Sudan. Certainly, compared to many other states, basic services are overall more readily available and most investment in the South Sudan has focused in and around the town. Several government-run primary health clinics have been built, private health centres and pharmacies are burgeoning, the government has supported the expansion of the Juba Day secondary school and the town hosts a university. However, the benefits of these improvements are not shared equally among Juba’s inhabitants. Water points are not being maintained, health clinics are short of staff, equipment and medicines and government schools are overcrowded and lack trained teachers. Private Service provision is growing, but few can afford to pay for school fees or drug treatments.
There has been little investment in Juba’s infrastructure beyond works designed to rehabilitate existing infrastructure in order to enable the government to function.
Some non-demarcated areas have lacked services for three decades. Neither the government nor aid agencies wish to invest in services that might later be destroyed due to replanning. Public services are dependent on roads being opened, which in turn is subject to land allocation procedures. The absence of roads in non-demarcated areas makes them very difficult to access, particularly in the rainy season. Access to services is therefore to a large extent determined by location, the ability to pay for transport to the town centres or the ability to pay for private services. The demand for land also means that areas that have been demarcated for services and roads are being occupied, creating further obstacles to service expansion.
A consistent finding across all areas where roads have been opened up is that this has contributed to improving the security situation by allowing greater mobility for police patrols, and reducing congestion in settlement areas. The availability of electricity was also found to have a bearing on the security situation. In Atlabara, for example, residents noted that, since electricity had been extended to some parts, it was no longer as dangerous to walk around in the evenings. Public electricity is mainly provided to Class 1 areas around the centres of the town, even though some efforts are currently under way to expand the network. While areas such as Atlabara and Kator are connected to the line, they only have electricity for one or two days a week.
While Central Equatoria State is better served than the rest of Southern Sudan in terms of the number of schools and teachers, the difficulties of attending school and particularly pursuing secondary education were consistent across all study locations. While there is no data on the number of residents in Juba that are of school-going age, in addition to potential numbers of over-age students, data from the former Central Equatoria state now Jubek state Ministry of Education shows very low rates of school enrolment, particularly with regard to secondary education.
Many young people reported starting to attend classes but then dropping out because they were unable to pay school fees and transport costs. Although 40% of teachers in Juba are trained, compared to other states in South Sudan, there has been an increase in the number of primary school teachers, this increase has mainly been accounted for by untrained teachers. The number of trained teachers has in fact declined from 2012-2015. Furthermore, teachers’ allowances in government-run schools are lower than in privately-run schools, which could also be affecting the quality of teaching.
In Lologo, for example, the community collected money to start a community school, parents contribute to support the staff. In Hai Miskin, parents started a self-help school under a tree after they abandoned their plan to build a permanent school for their children because they were concerned that it would be demolished.
Many parents stressed the importance of school for their children. In Gabat, a group of households living under a temporary shelter next to an office building invest almost all their income in school fees and stationery and pens so that their children can attend school. As one mother remarked, ‘we have to send them because they get fed at school and they can’t stay here in these living conditions and the risks from loitering around in the area The large numbers of young people who are neither in school nor employed was mentioned by some as a risk to other people in school because they can be encouraged to drop out. Drop-out rates amongst secondary school students were also a worry. Some students have no parents to support them and some female students married and left school due to pregnancy. For those attending school, the learning environment is affected as a number of students had to go without food in the morning after WFP stopped school feeding interventions.
The other main health concerns in Juba are malaria, waterborne and respiratory diseases, acute watery diarrhea and neonatal and infant mortality, while Juba has better rates of neonatal and infant survival than other states in Southern Sudan, mortality rates are still very high.
HIV/AIDS is another problem. Health centres reported an increase in the number of people testing HIV-positive, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). One health unit in Nyokuron said that it received around 15 HIV-positive results per month, a third of them pregnant women.
Due to the lack of data, it is not clear how significant the increase in infection rates is, what factors might be driving this and whether it is affecting all residents equally. Nor is it clear how far the increased availability of antiretroviral drugs is encouraging more people to take the test. Health facilities are overcrowded as patient numbers have doubled or tripled since the independent. Despite government efforts to rehabilitate local health centres, many still rely on the Juba Teaching Hospital, which is too small for the growing number of patients it attracts from all over the states. According to one health official, the situation with regard to human resources, particularly nursing and midwifery is worse today than in the early years of independent across Southern Sudan as a whole. As patient numbers increase, health service personnel are being cut.
In peri-urban areas of Juba there are often no government health services at all and patients need to be transported over long distances to the Juba Teaching Hospital for treatment. In other non-demarcated areas roads are reportedly obstructed by squatter settlements, and as result ambulances cannot get through. In Lologo, for instance, residents reported that, in the absence of a midwife, if a woman is close to delivery and needs emergency care she has to be carried to the hospital on a makeshift stretcher.
Private clinics, often run by Ugandan or Kenyan staffs, are unaffordable for most. There are very few health interventions in Juba, and what interventions there are tend to be ad hoc. The Government has not yet decided whether it will continue to provide public health services or whether it will sub-contract health care on a permanent basis.
Most of Juba’s residents rely on two sources of water too, tankers and boreholes. Only the central areas and Kator are covered by the town’s old water pipe network which was recently rehabilitated. However, a lack of coordination between the road companies and the Urban Water Corporation mean that many of the newly restored pipes were recently destroyed when the roads were rehabilitated.
Access to water in areas on the outskirts of Juba is particularly problematic. Residents often have to rely on rainwater which is difficult to store and quickly becomes infected. Although there are boreholes across the town, many no longer work due to lack of maintenance. In the 1980s Gumbo had 14 boreholes, but only three are still functioning. In Lologo only one of four boreholes is still operational. There is a water tap in the military barracks which relatives of soldiers can use, but most people rely on mobile water trucks. In Gudele West, people queue for up to eight hours at one of the two boreholes to collect two or three jerricans. Few people own or have access to latrines and most resort to using open fields. In non-demarcated areas, most people hesitate to construct a latrine because of the fear of demolition. Only in areas such as Atlabara, which were demarcated some time ago, did people frequently report having proper latrines. Across the river, residents on Gondokoro Island reported that latrine slabs were quickly destroyed due to the sandy soil.
In some areas in the town center, trucks collect garbage for a fee, albeit irregularly. However, population of Juba’s residents have no access to waste management services. Waste is burned, dumped in streams or in open areas or buried. In Lologo the soil has been affected, making cultivation difficult. The same problem was noted in Kator. As the town expands, water and soil contamination will also have consequences for communities residing on the island and those who rely on agriculture as their main source of livelihood. Another aspect of urbanization that is having an increasingly significant environmental impact on Nile water is liquid waste from factories and hotels. Local leaders in Gondokoro payam accused hotels of polluting the Nile with sewage waste; apparently ‘people don’t know it is unsafe’.
Water contamination means that people in flood-prone areas such as Lologo are vulnerable to waterborne diseases, including cholera. Cholera outbreaks were recorded in each respective year. The worst affected areas were the payams of Kator and Munuki. It was reported that, during the rainy season, the river water passes over open fields that have been used as latrines. Water collection points along the riverbank risk becoming sources of contamination. The disease is also spread through water tankers.
It is unclear who has overall responsibility for ensuring the maintenance of boreholes. No maintenance is being carried out by the Government Ministry for Water Resources and Irrigation, while the Urban Water Cooperation reportedly considers that boreholes lie outside its mandate.
The author is a master of strategic studies at Centre for Peace and Development Studies University of Juba, He can be reached via Linolual69@yahoo.com
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